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Posts Tagged ‘fender’

I haven’t had much time to devote to GuitarGear.org in the last couple of years, so when I do post something, it has to be meaningful to me. And surprise, surprise… I got an email in my inbox this morning that kind of intrigued me. It was an announcement from Fender that they were releasing version IV of their popular Hot Rod Series of amps.

Normally, I’d be like “whoop-dee-doo,” but after reading what they’ve done with the amps, I got really intrigued. I’ve had a Hot Rod Deluxe for years; it was my very first tube amp. So I’ve kept tabs on the various changes the lineup has gone through. I haven’t been all that impressed with the previous releases, but the new features in the new version – at least in the Hot Rod Deluxe and Deville – are pretty significant; significant enough for me to plug it. So here’s what Fender has listed on their site for major features:

40 watts; Normal, Drive, and More Drive channels

Celestion 12″ A-Type speaker

Modified preamp circuitry for increased overdriven note definition

Spring reverb modified for improved smoothness

Lightweight pine cabinet

Includes 2-button footswitch and cover

To me, the two features that stick out are the pine cabinet and the preamp circuitry for better overdrive. In particular, the overdrive on the Hot Rod has been pretty weak in previous versions. In fact, I would rarely use the drive channel on my own amp, and just use the amp as a pedal platform. But if they’ve improved the overdrive channel, that’s intriguing enough for me to check out.

I almost bought a Series III amp from my buddy a few years ago. It was much lighter in weight than my Series II, but the overdrive of the amp was simply, well, uninspiring, and way too open and choppy for my tastes. I even tried running the amp through a different speaker, and it still didn’t improve the sound. But if they’ve tightened it up with more note definition, this really gets me excited.

What about the change to a pine cabinet? Damn! Not only would that significantly lighten the weight of the amp, it would make it much more resonant. I absolutely love pine cabinets. They just resonate so, so beautifully! Combine that with the silky smooth Fender cleans or even with some tight overdrive, damn! Yet again! Interestingly enough, with the Pro Junior IV and the Blues Junior IV, Fender has replaced the birch/plywood cabinet with MDF. Maybe it made more sense sonically to them; hard to know what a manufacturer is thinking.

Summary: Part of the Fender Classic Design series, this lower-end model is a real surprise; especially in the sound department. Nice, low action, and a great feel. If you’re looking for a starter guitar or getting your child his or her very first guitar, you can’t go wrong with the FA 135 CE.

Pros: Some reviews have questioned the build quality of this guitar, but I’m very impressed with how solid this guitar is built. The guitar stays in tune and playing it is so, so easy. And for a smaller concert size guitar, this has a very rich sound; it’s quite unexpected.

Cons: The only nit that I have – and it’s really just a nit – is that the tuners are bit fast for my tastes. Fine tuning is a little challenging at first, but it’s easy to get used to.

Price: $179 street

Features:

Laminated bass wood sides and back

Laminated spruce top with X-bracing reinforcement

Nato wood neck

Rosewood fretboard

Compensated rosewood saddle

Single cutaway

Fishman Ion-T Preamp with built-in tuner

Tone Bone Rating: 4.75 ~ For what it is, I can’t help but give this guitar a great rating. Fender really surprised me with this guitar!

My 12-year-old son has been taking Ukelele lessons for a couple of years, and after he finished his last lesson, he came out and told me that he wanted to start playing guitar. His teacher, Michael, had accompanied him out of the lesson room and told me that he was ready. And since his birthday was coming up, I thought I’d get him a new one, as opposed to fixing up one of my old ones. My thought is that just like my dad did for me, I’d give my son a brand new guitar for his first one.

So today I went to Guitar Center and spent a couple of hours in their acoustic room evaluating all sorts of acoustic guitars. I didn’t want to spend over $200 for this guitar, but luckily, as a big-box retailer, Guitar Center has a pretty wide selection of “value” guitars. I tried guitars from Mitchell, a used “Little Martin,” several Yamaha guitars, and even a Gretsch.

The Little Martin was impressive and solidly built and was at a great price of $189, but it wouldn’t be available until Wednesday due to some city ordinance about a waiting period for used guitars. I needed a guitar today. So I sat in the acoustic room, and my gaze fell upon the Fender. I immediately thought to myself that it looked really nice. But, the thought also occurred that it was a Fender acoustic, and my previous experiences with those haven’t been all that good.

But in spite of my preconceptions, I decided to give it a try and was immediately surprised by the tone of the guitar. For a smaller-body guitar, I wasn’t expecting much sound-wise. But this had a sweet, gorgeous, rich tone. It completely took me by surprise. Then I started playing it, and thought, This couldn’t be a Fender acoustic! It sounds and plays way too nice – especially at $179!

Folks, this guitar is a sleeper, and it reminds me of the experience I had with my Squier Classic Vibe Tele. Great sound, great playability at a SUPER-affordable price!

Fit and Finish

The build quality of this guitar is awesome, just like my CV Tele. There are no uneven paint lines, and all the seams are clean and straight. The neck is straight, and the action is set up low, though it does raise just a little bit in the higher registers; but it’s not so bad that it’s not playable. This is a great guitar for fingerstyle playing, but even strummed, there’s no buzz. But more importantly, the setup is perfect for a beginning guitarist like my little boy.

Playability

Quite frankly, the main criterium for choosing a guitar for my son was playability. I could live with a guitar that had only okay sound just as long as it was easy to play. The frets are medium wire. Not great for bending and vibrato, but hey! This is a beginner’s guitar, so that’s not a big issue. The spacing is great between the frets as this is a shorter-scale guitar. For a seasoned player, this guitar plays with ease. For a beginner and a young player at that, the short scale will help them build up confidence.

How It Sounds

For a low-priced guitar, the FA 135 CE is amazingly articulate. As expected, it has a bit brighter voice as compared to a larger body guitar. But it has some nice sustain, and the spruce soundboard resonates with a surprisingly rich tone. Projection is great with this guitar due to the X-bracing under the top to provide stability and to help with projection. What also surprised me about this guitar is that it’s louder than I expected.

Tone-wise, as for me, I prefer a brighter-sounding guitar. While I liked the Little Martin, doing an A/B with that vs. the FA 135, it was as if a blanket was put over the Martin. The sound was much warmer and a bit too subdued for my tastes. That guitar projected very loud, but it would get lost in the mix when played with other guitars. This shouldn’t happen with the FA 135 CE.

Quick Demo

Here’s a quick demo I recorded just before posting this review. Sorry for the sound quality – and background noises – as this was recorded using my MacBook’s built in microphone, my new puppy was being a little playful across the room… 🙂

Preamp Test

As mentioned above, the guitar comes equipped with a Fishman Ion-T preamp. It’s a pretty simple preamp, so I thought I would give it a whirl. It’s not a bad preamp as preamps go, but it’s nothing special. In fact, its output is only okay. In order to record, I had to peg the guitar’s volume and add a lot of gain on my audio interface. Not a big deal. What was important to me was if I could get a good enough guitar signal to use the guitar in a song.

I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the result. I didn’t have to tweak the EQ at all. Of course, I did some production processing, but that was the point of the exercise, which was to see if I could get a good, mixable acoustic guitar sound from a plugged in guitar.

Overall Impression

I love this guitar! Who cares if it was manufactured in China. I have to commend Fender for finding an overseas manufacturer that does a great job at building guitars. The build, play and sound quality of this guitar have far exceeded my expectations. I think this is a guitar that my son will enjoy for years to come!

I love overdrive pedals. I have a bunch of them. But I realized that part of why I have so many has a lot to do with not really understanding how to set them up properly. I’d get an overdrive pedal because a demo I heard sounded great, or I loved how it was voiced. But when I’d get it home, it just wouldn’t sound quite right, so I’d put it in my “storage” area.

But as I got more experienced with setting up my amps, I also began to understand how to set up my overdrive pedals. And now that I have a bunch, I’ve got a variety of pedals to choose from to get the sound I want depending on my sets or my mood – okay, I admit it: It’s mostly due to my mood. 🙂

Admittedly, I did a lot of forum lurking as well to gain insights on setting up an overdrive, so a lot of what I’ll be sharing here comes from the things I’ve learned from others in addition to the stuff I’ve learned on my own.

What actually motivated me to write this was a conversation that I had with a friend. I asked him what he thought of a particular overdrive pedal, and he said he didn’t like the way it sounded. I looked at him a little puzzled and said, “Maybe you didn’t set it up right.” And that led me to say that not all overdrives are created equal, and you have to set them up according to how they work best, or how they were intended to be used. Truth be told, I haven’t spoken to him since that conversation, so I have no idea if he tried what I suggested. But in light of that, I decided to share my thoughts.

Types of Overdrives – Not Necessarily What You Might Think

Before we get into the actual setup of an overdrive, I thought I’d go into a discussion about types of overdrives because how you set up an overdrive has a lot to do with the type of overdrive it is. No, this isn’t a discussion about circuit types or transparency. I suppose this could be related to the circuit type on which an overdrive is based, but I’m not that electrically savvy, so I’ll discuss this in more practical terms.

From my experience with having played several overdrives, I’ve found that they fall into roughly two different categories (mind you, these are my own terms): Interactive and Standalone. Interactive overdrives are meant to interact with the preamp of your amp, and together they produce the overdrive sound.

Standalone overdrives are typically purpose-built to mimic an amplifier, and though they can certainly be set up to be interactive, they can function just fine on their own in front of a clean amp.

Notice that I haven’t named any specific overdrive models. The reason why is that overdrives sound different with different amps. For instance, the EHX Soul Food sounds great as a standalone overdrive in front of my Fender amp. But it doesn’t sound nearly as good as a standalone overdrive in front of my Plexi-style amps, so I set it up as an interactive overdrive for those amps.

So the idea behind interactive vs. standalone has little to do with a specific type or model of overdrive; rather, it has to do with how the overdrive sounds with your amp.

Setting Up an Overdrive

I have two processes that I go through to set up an overdrive. At this point, I know all my pedals and whether they’re standalone or interactive, but I still follow the same processes for my different pedals when I set them up on my board. Also, if I come across or get a new overdrive, I first assume that it can be a standalone overdrive, then if I find it doesn’t work well that way, I’ll then set it up to be interactive. Here are the step-by-step processes I follow:

Setting Up a Standalone Overdrive

Set up the amp:

Clean

Set EQ to work with your guitar

Set guitar volume to the middle

Guitar EQ where you want it

Set overdrive with all knobs to the middle.

Engage the overdrive and get it to unity gain (so that when you engage it, your volume doesn’t change), or to just get a small volume bump when the pedal’s engaged.

Set the EQ on the overdrive

Adjust the overdrive/gain knob to get your desired amount of distortion from the pedal.

You will probably have to make adjustments to the level knob to maintain unity gain.

Evaluate the sound and feel by playing around with chord progressions and licks.

All the while, raise and lower your guitar volume to see how the pedal responds.

Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you dial in the right volume/sound/feel.

If the volume, sound, and feel are fine for you, then you’re all set and ready to gig and the overdrive pedal will work fine as a standalone device.

If the sound doesn’t feel “right,” chances are you’ll have to do some interaction with the preamp of your amp, so continue to the next section.

Setting Up an Interactive Overdrive

Set up the amp

Set Gain/Volume so the amp is at the edge of breakup.

You’ll know it’s there when you turn up the guitar’s volume and the amp begins to distort, then cleans up when you turn it down. Also, if the guitar’s volume is set to the middle, if you strum hard it will break up.

Set EQ on the amp

Set your guitar volume to the middle

Set guitar EQ where you like it

Set overdrive with all knobs at their middle positions

Engage the overdrive

More likely than not, you’ll get a big volume boost when you engage at this level, so you’ll have to adjust both the overdrive’s level and amp’s volume/master knobs to get to the right volume.

If you don’t have a master volume, turn down the overdrive’s volume/level knob to get to a manageable volume.

Because you want to get both overdrive AND amp distortion, you’ll want to get a small volume bump when you engage the pedal as you want the amp to go over the edge of breakup.

Now, play around.

See how the combination responds to volume swells on your guitar.

Make adjustments to the overdrive gain to get the right combination of pedal and amp distortion.

The Importance of EQ

Notice that I mention setting EQ on the amp, guitar, and overdrive pedal. Setting EQ is extremely important because it can be the difference-maker in your overall tone. There’s no “ideal” EQ setting. But for me as a rule of thumb, I want to get a rich, slightly bright tone that sits well in the mix and isn’t so warm compared to the other instruments so it won’t get washed out when we’re all playing together.

Also, for live gigs, I usually don’t touch my amp or pedal EQ once I get them set up. I use my guitar’s tone knob to adjust how warm or bright my sound to be.

Amp/Pedal Combinations

All that said, if you’ve followed the steps for setting up an interactive overdrive, and it still doesn’t sound right no matter what you do, then the pedal sucks. Just kidding. 🙂 Truth be told, I’ve found some overdrives work better with different amps. If you have another amp, then try the pedal out in front of it.

For instance, Paul Cochrane of “Tim” and “Timmy” pedal fame recommends not using the pedal in front of a Fender Blackface amp. I don’t have a blackface amp, so I had to take him at his word, but the Timmy works great in front of all my amps. For me, I will not use my venerable Ibanez TS-808 TubeScreamer in front of my vintage Marshall-style amps. It just doesn’t sound good to me, no matter how I set it up.

I think it’s because the TS produces a big midrange bump when engaged, and my amps are voiced bright, so it ends up sounding piercing like little ice picks on my eardrums. Even EQ adjustments don’t work for me. But in front of my Fender Hot Rod, the TS truly screams! My Hot Rod has the classic Fender “scooped” tone, so the predominant midrange of the TS fills in the mids.

What About Stacking Overdrives?

That gets a bit more complicated, but I’d follow the basic procedures above, treating the trailing pedal as the amp. In this case, I’d tend to set up the amp as clean and have the trailing pedal always on. There lots of ways to approach this as well. I know one guitarist that uses three at once to get his “sound.” More power to him! 🙂

But truth be told, I hate to dance on my board, so even though I will use a couple of overdrives, I only use one at a time depending on the kind of voicing I want. I also, don’t like complicate my sound finding the right balance of multiple overdrives. I just want to play. Granted, I could do a lot of pre-gig work to get that, but for me, employing the KISS theory works best.

Many people like to stack, and that’s great. Stevie Ray Vaughan used to use two TubeScreamers stacked together; one as an overdrive and one as a booster.

Wah-wah and Overdrive

If you don’t use a wah-wah pedal, then you can ignore this section. But I thought it would be important to add this to the mix, mainly because I’ve found that certain overdrives work better depending on where the wah-wah pedal is placed. Admittedly, my personal preference is to place the wah pedal after my overdrives. But there are a few boutique overdrive pedals that I have that work much better when the wah pedal is in front of them. Not sure why this is. Luckily, I only have a couple of pedals that act this way, so I know not to use a wah pedal with them if I have it set up after my overdrives.

Exploration

To close this out, I have to admit that I’m a bit of an overdrive junkie. I may not buy every single one that piques my interest, but I do check out new overdrives when I run across them. The great thing about overdrives is that they really are all different, even the knock-offs, so I’ll continue to explore overdrives. I never know what I might find. 🙂

My very first tube amp was a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. I got it based on a conversation I’d had with Noel at Tone Merchants in Orange, CA back in 2007; soon after I created this blog. In fact, my Hot Rod Deluxe was the reason I created this blog in the first place! It started making me think about gear combinations, and thus GuitarGear.org was born in January of 2007.

I remember the conversation. It was sometime around November 2006. At the time, I was playing an earlier model Line 6 and a Roland Cube 60. Both amps served me well for playing with my church band, and from 2001 through 2006, I just played those two amps (also, I’d occasionally use a Roland JC120).

But as I started getting the gear bug (I had already started to acquire a few guitars and a bunch of pedals), I realized that where I was lacking was in the amp department. So I started going on the gear boards, and I saw a reference to Tone Merchants and gave them a call. Noel answered the phone, and we must’ve chatted for at least a half-hour. He explained how tube amps worked and how they respond to various inputs and how different types of tube configurations produce different sounds. I remember telling him that my head was spinning.

He laughed and said that the trick with tube amps is that you have to play a bunch until you find the right sound for you. This is where he made the distinction between Marshall and Fender tones, and until I knew what I liked, he recommended I don’t buy a boutique amp right away. Instead, he said that I should get a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. It was a great platform with which to start out. I could learn about swapping tubes and replacing speakers. And then once I’d gotten the hang of a tube amp, I could start looking at other amps. So I got a Hot Rod Deluxe II. Then over the next few years acquired a bunch more amps, all in search of that elusive unicorn of tone.

Now I’ve come full circle. I’m back in a band that plays mostly 60’s – 70’s classic rock, but I’ve also made a foray into writing and playing reggae. Clean is the name of the game with almost everything I’m playing right now, and if I need some dirt, I just switch on an overdrive or distortion pedal. And since I’m gigging with the band, I’ve been wanting to use a simpler combo as opposed to my separate heads and cabs. Those give me a lot of versatility, but the fewer pieces to lug, the better.

Fixing my amp

With respect to the Hot Rod, it worked for a long time and though I didn’t use as much, I still played it. But about a year ago, I was recording a new reggae song, and it just started cutting out after a few minutes. And being in a rush to lay down a track, I just switched amps, not wanting to deal with my failed amp. So I covered up the Hot Rod and put it back on its shelf, where it stayed until this morning.

I recently wrote a blog post about the Fender Ultra Chorus and said I wanted to get one. But I thought to myself this morning that rather than getting yet another amp, let me see if all that was wrong with the Hot Rod was a bad power tube. Luckily I had a matched set of spare JJ 6L6GCs in my tube drawer.

So I pulled my amp off the shelf, I plugged the power tubes in, and let the amp run for several minutes in standby mode. Then I started playing and found absolutely nothing wrong. Damn! There was that Fender clean tone! And with the scooped tone of the Eminence Red Coat “The Governor” speaker that I installed years ago, it was simply audio honey!

I love it when a fix goes this easy! Especially for me, deathly afraid of electronics, swapping out tubes is about the most I will do. But more importantly, I now my gigging amp! I never thought I’d use my Hot Rod Deluxe again, but as they say, needs must.

Yesterday, I had band rehearsal. But since I had a gig immediately after, I just brought my little ’58 Champ in a custom 1 X 10 cabinet to keep things simple. When I arrived, our drummer, whose house we use for practice, told me to take our lead singer’s normal spot as he was out of town. And sitting there was a Fender amp. I immediately said, “Since there’s already an amp there, I’ll just plug into that instead of setting up my rig, since it’ll be faster to get set up and strike down.”

At first, at a distance, I thought it was a Twin, but when I could see it closer, I saw that it was an Ultra Chorus. I had actually never heard of an Ultra Chorus and figured it was one of the cheaper solid state Fender amps. But I thought, Whatever. We’re just practicing and it’ll do…

So I just set up my EWS Little Brute Drive, plugged in my guitar and ran a cord to the amp, and flipped the amp’s switch to the “On” position. Immediately, I got a scratching sound because I was moving my hand on the fretboard. I forgot that with a solid state amp, you get sound – now. 🙂 But it also gave me pause because even though the volume knob was set to 4, the amp was loud; too loud even for practice and a full band, so I turned it down to 1.

I just started twiddling to get warmed up, and I just couldn’t help but notice just how good the amp sounded. I played it purely clean with a little reverb and a touch of chorus mixed into the sound. I was floored at the tone! My Les Paul sounded so deep and pure. I just closed my eyes and started playing some clean runs and chord progressions. The tone was dropping me into the zone!

Not really thinking about it, I started playing the opening riff to “Dock of the Bay,” just vamping on the G, then our bassist joined in, then the drummer picked it up. Our keyboard player took notice and she started playing, and then I just started going off with a clean solo for an intro, nodded to our singer, and she just opened up.

Throughout practice, I was doing runs and fills or playing under our singer, or adding little touches when I was singing. I was so inspired by the tone, I just went off. After finishing Duffy’s “Warwick Avenue,” our keyboard player commented that that was the best rendition we’d played, and then our drummer said he liked the guitar work. I immediately said, “You know, when I’m feeling inspired, I just get lost in the sound, and play my ass off. This amp totally reinforces why I want to get a Fender Twin. I’m tellin’ ya, I’m loving this sound right now.” That was met with simple smiles of agreement.

So… this amp is solid state! The tube amp purist in me says that it shouldn’t sound this good. But the realist in me believes in what Duke Ellington once said: If it sounds good, it IS good. Hell! I play through a solid state amp with my acoustic rig, and it sounds freakin’ killer! This is no different. This little gem of an amp is a cheap amp. In fact, you can pick one up for $200 online. I’m going to get one. Maybe today.

I’m still going to get the Twin Reverb – eventually. But for playing clean, and just putting an overdrive or distortion box in front of the amp, this’ll do. And before anyone scrunches up their nose about a solid state amp, consider this: A great guitarist that I know, Vinnie Smith, owner of V-Picks, gigs with an old Roland Cube 30 that he mics on stage! In fact, when he does demos, you never see the amp, but he plays through his Cube 30! So like I said, if it sounds good, it IS good!

About the amp

From what I could gather, this amp was made from 1992-1994. By 1995, Fender re-dubbed it the “Ultimate Chorus.” This is a 2 X 65W solid state amp. It has two foot-switchable channels, with built-in reverb and, of course, chorus, and two input jacks. You can play it stereo at 65W, or mono at 130W.

As I said, this amp is LOUD. For the entire practice, I didn’t play over 1 1/2! Granted, our drummer was playing with rods, and we had our practice volume pretty far down. But even at gig volumes, I doubt I’d put it over 4. Or, if I do get one, I’ll see if I could swap the pot out for something that has a bit smoother taper.

As far as the distortion is concerned, playing around, I set up the 2nd channel for distortion, but it gave me pretty much what I was expecting: A pretty compressed distortion sound that was not at all pleasing to my ears, not matter how much I twiddle the EQ knobs. But clean, this amp oozes that “Fender-clean” goodness. Add a little reverb grease, and a touch of chorus, and it’s a nice smooth sound.

Apparently, the amp is my bandmate’s son’s amp. He had the EQ set up scooped, and I kept it set like that for the most part, though I did turn the bass down a bit because my Les Paul has a naturally deep sound; especially with the neck pickup.

Sourcing the amp…

Finding one isn’t going to be easy. And even after that, it’s not going to be easy finding one that’s in good working condition. There are a couple of them on E-Bay for $300+. But they’re only rated in “good” condition and sold as-is. That’s a crap shoot. Guitar Center has one for $200 but the face plate is bent up on the left side, exposing a sharp corner that could cut. Not sure where that amp is located, but I might be able to get them to ship it to my local GC so I could inspect it.

BUT having reviewed literally hundreds of different kinds of gear of over the life of this blog (has it really been 9 years?), I’ve developed the discipline to not give into my initial urges and force myself to test gear thoroughly and in a variety of settings before I make a decision about getting something.

I tell you, that guilty-before-proven-innocent attitude has literally saved me thousands of dollars as I would discover that many things I’ve tested may sound great in one or two settings, but just fail horribly in other areas. Not that something has to perform well in all areas, but it must perform well in the area in which I will be using it the most.

Such is the case with the Fender Deluxe Reverb Limited Edition amp that I borrowed from a friend with the intent to buy it if I really liked it. My first sound tests were great, as they focused almost entirely on the clean tone. We all know that you just can’t go wrong with Fender cleans. But then I hooked it up to an attenuator so I could crank it up without bursting my eardrums.

Talk about a deflating experience. The custom speaker sounded like crap, so I bypassed the internal speaker and hooked up the amp to my custom Aracom 1 X 12 with the Jensen Jet Nighthawk, and the skies parted, and manna rained down from heaven. So I resolved to swap out the speaker before my band rehearsal and see how it would perform.

But life happens, and I just couldn’t find the time to do a speaker swap. But I wanted to test the amp in a band environment, and so I took it to my rehearsal as-is; no attenuator, just the stock configuration. When I got to rehearsal, I hooked up my gear, and set the amp to about 5, so I could get a little breakup with the volume knob on my guitar set to dead-center. That way, I could clean up the signal or dirty it up more with just some volume sweep. But I also took an overdrive pedal with me for some extra oomph when it was time for me to do a solo.

Dammit! I couldn’t believe my ears when we started going through our songs. The tone was absolutely marvelous! So much so that about a half hour into rehearsal, I made up my mind: I was going to keep the amp. What I realized was that the stock speaker, which I hadn’t been all that impressed with needed to be pushing air for me to really get a feel for what it was capable. And when it was able to gets the SPLs up, my mind was blown. This truly was one of the best-sounding amps I’ve ever heard, and that’s saying a lot, as I’ve heard some GREAT amps. It was right on par with the quality of my Aracom amps’ tone. Some people had mentioned that the amp produced a bit of an ice-picky sound. I didn’t get that impression whatsoever. It might very well be that up close you’d get that kind of artifact. But standing 8-10 feet away from the amp, I just got a very nice, rich tone that didn’t have any noticeable high-frequency artifacts. For me at least, I was in tone heaven!

So here’s my dilemma: I dig no, LOVE this amp. But unlike my previous experience with other gear where I loved the tone right away, only to be disappointed when I used it in the environment that I was going to be primarily using it, with the Deluxe, it was the exact opposite experience. I had mixed feelings initially, but when I used it where I’d normally be using it, it was #mind-blown!!! That was NOT supposed to happen. Rehearsal was supposed to confirm my initial findings. Instead, it turned my world upside-down! And instead of my GAS being relieved, I’ve got it stronger than ever!

Another thing that really appealed to me was the amp’s simplicity. With just a single volume knob with no master, you just set it where you’re comfortable, and just go. I know, a lot of people like to have a master volume. Almost all my amps besides this one have a master volume. BUT, with this amp, I look to it as being more of a platform for pedals. It doesn’t have enough overdrive to do it on its own; that is, if you don’t want to make your eardrums bleed or completely step on the band. So I’ve been using it with overdrive and distortion pedals, and it rocks with those! So the setup for me, is set the EQ’s to the guitar I’m playing, then set the volume level where it’s comfortable.

I’m actually quite impressed that I don’t see any modifications that I have to make – yet. Just for shits and giggles, I may replace the pre-amp 12AX7’s with some 1959 RCA Mil-spec tubes that are just wonderful workhorse tubes and sound great to boot. I may even bias the power tubes just a tad cooler to add a smidgen of clean headroom. But frankly, I’m in no rush to do either. The amp is freakin’ awesome as-is!

Okay, I lied. I said in my previous article that I’d have a First Impressions article in the next couple of days. But I got to play around with the amp for a couple of hours yesterday and decided that I played it enough to get a good idea of what I like and don’t like, at least a first blush.

What I Liked

The cleans with this amp are just as expected from any Fender tube amp: They’re spectacular. With just a little bit of reverb grease (around 2-3), the cleans sound deep and alluring. Played with my American Deluxe Strat with Kinman HX pickups and my ’59 Les Paul Replica, I just fell in love with the clean tone this amp creates! Old Leo got it right with the cleans on his amps. There’s nothing like a Fender clean sound. I realize that it’s not for everyone, but I’ve always been a fan.

As far as overdrive is concerned, this amp wants to growl. It stays pretty clean up to 4 on the volume knob, then will start breaking up. With the higher-output HX pickups on my Strat, I could get a great gritty tone with the volume knob on my guitar set at about 6-7; then just a little grittier when I dime my volume. It’s a completely different experience with my Les Paul, even with the lower-output Dr. Vintage PAFs. Set at about 5, I could get tons of grit, then cranked, I’d start getting some compression out of the power tubes. Upping the amp’s volume to 6-7 got me into tons of distortion. The cool thing was that the amp cleaned up very well, when I brought the volume down on my guitar, so it’s totally controllable.

What I Didn’t Like

While I liked the nature of the grit coming from the tubes, I didn’t care too much for the actual tone. Cleans were fine, well, as I said, “spectacular.” But I’m playing lead guitar in a classic rock band, and I’m anticipating using the amp to get a great rock sound. To me, that’s not possible with the stock speaker.

While I love Jensen speakers – I’m a huge fanboy of the Jet series – I’m not too keen on Jensen alnico speakers; at least for rock. For blues, they sound great, and when I did play bluesy stuff which didn’t require much grit, I loved the tone. But when I pushed the amp hard, the speaker breakup turned a little flabby for my tastes, and the amp lost a lot of dynamics and touch-sensitivity, and sounded “mushy.” It was a very “meh” experience. I think that’s a factor – at least for me – with Alnico speakers. I’ve only liked them for rock tones when there’s a couple or a few in a cab. But in a 1 X 12, their tone just doesn’t appeal to me.

I originally thought that with a 40 Watt speaker, I could get a great tone as the combination of tube and speaker breakup would produce something nice. But what I found was that particular combination didn’t really do it for me. The amp itself breaks up early, and around 6-7, I get all the breakup I need when I dime my guitar’s volume. Plus, when I bring my guitar volume down to 2 or 3, the amp cleans up. So that’s definitely the sweet spot, amp-wise. Unfortunately, the 40 Watt speaker can’t take that kind of gain.

But it’s a damn good thing that I have a lot of gear!

I pulled my 1 X 12 cabinet loaded with my latest favorite speaker, the Jensen Jet Nighthawk, and everything changed. My disappointment overdriving the stock speaker was complete erased when I when I hooked that cabinet up. The thing about the Nighthawk is that it has a full bottom-end, but not so beefy that it overshadows the tone. At the same time, the mids are tight and understated and the highs are just high enough to cut through a mix. So while you might think that the speaker might be on the warm side, it’s actually not. It’s more of a scooped tone (you’ll see what I mean if you at the frequency response chart on the link I shared above).

What this means for this amp is that it’s the perfect foil for the natural midrange I’ve come to expect from amps equipped with 6V6 power tubes, and totally balances out the tone of the amp. And yes, it is 75 Watts, which means that by using this speaker, the amp got a whole lot more clean headroom, which was why they put a lower wattage speaker in, to get breakup early. But for me, the amp itself produces all the overdrive I need. I don’t need metal crunch because I’m playing classic rock. If I ever need more, I just have to plug in my EWS Little Brute Drive, and I’ll get all the crunch I need.

That said, with the 75 Watt speaker, I could crank up the amp to pretty high levels to really push the tubes, and unlike the stock speaker, the overdrive did not sound flabby, nor did I lose the dynamics and touch-sensitivity as I did with the stock Alnico.

To get to that kind of drive without pissing off my wife who was working in the next room, I did use an attenuator (an Aracom DRX). No, I wasn’t at bedroom levels because that would just sound funky. But it was above conversation levels. At that volume the speaker wasn’t breaking up at all, so what I got was pure amp tone. In a word, the tone is inspiring.

Overall Initial Impression

To be perfectly honest, and I know that this is purely subjective, in stock configuration, this amp is really meant for the blues. I originally thought otherwise based upon a pretty good demo I saw on YouTube of this very amp that it could be used for rock and softer alt-rock. But the guy doing the demo was playing a standard Strat, so the demo only displayed a fairly narrow set of its capabilities as standard single-coil pups just won’t push the front-end as much as my Kinman HX and humbuckers. Like I said, it’s a totally different story with a Les Paul.

That’s not to say that if you throw a couple of pedals in front of it, you can make it rock as-is. You can do that, but for me, I like my overdrive to come predominantly from my amp, then use an overdrive pedal to help push it over the edge and add only a touch of its own dirt to the signal. So that option is kind of out of the question.

Speaking of clean headroom… considering the configuration, I’m wondering what target market Fender had in mind for the Limited Edition DRRI. It’s certainly pretty to look at with its wheat grille and burgundy tolex. It almost screams “furniture,” which might imply that this is a bedroom or living room piece, as opposed to the more pedestrian standard DRRI, which sports an 80 Watt Jensen C12-K. That’s more headroom, but that kind of volume is more like gig volume to me.

But considering I don’t like the stock speaker, which might be the noose that kills this for me, with the right speaker, this can do rock, and do it quite well. Plus, it’s a combo, which is what I’m looking for with my new band. I don’t really want to lug a head and cab around.

All in all, I like this amp – a lot – so I think I’ll hold on to it for awhile. Admittedly, I won’t make my final decision until I use it at a gig, but I think it’ll work just fine once I swap out the stock speaker.